Inside Out: Dancehall and the “Re-Cooperation” of Meaning

Abstract

The function of metaphor and role-play in Caribbean popular culture is not always fully understood within and outside the indigenous context. Thus, the lyrics of Jamaica's dancehall DJ's, taken all too literally, have increasingly come under attack at home and abroad (176-77). The epigraph taken from Carolyn Cooper's essay collection emphasizes one of its most central concerns: the loss and misrepresentation of dancehall's meanings in both mainstream media and academic analyses. My title refers not only to the incisive critique which Cooper applies to dancehall culture, but also the ways in which the interpretive failures of foreign academics and the genre's domestic opponents necessitate Cooper's introductory reemphasis and reart - iculation of previously enunciated positions from the relative insider's position, particularly from a linguistic perspective. Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture at Large is arguably the cutting edge of the current phase in Caribbean cultural studies, challenging inordinately hegemonic textual readings, while simultaneously underscoring the centrality of text-cen- tered analysis. Although dancehall is her immediate focus, similar conceptual oppositions characterize broader Caribbean popular music discussions in an increasingly amplified dis - cursive friction between local and global. In the specific scholarly framework of Sound Clash, dancehall is clearly an intensely contested intellectual space within which the authenticities of interpreted cultural narratives are alternately asserted and challenged; the specter of ideological recolonization casts a large, threatening shadow in this arena. Cooper argues that dancehall has been demeaned, diminished, and devalued by inad- equate criticism lacking in both cultural awareness and critical objectivity. While recognizing